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thank you all

Music amid ruins

I found this curiously painterly photograph in the invaluable Archival Research Catalog of the National Archives. The caption reads: "Squad of American soldiers listening to one of their comrades playing the organ in the half-wrecked old church in Exermont, in the Argonne. France, October 11, 1918. Sergeant J. A. Marshall, ca. 1900 - 1982." It reminds me of Dmitri Baltermants's photograph "Tchaikovsky, Germany," which, for a long time, I wanted to use on the cover of The Rest Is Noise. It didn't work out graphically — and I was very fortunate to get the cover I had in the end. Here's one more image on this theme.